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Monday, July 30, 2012

Preschool Arabic Alphabet Games (1)

Some friends and I are running a "Ramadan Club" for our preschoolers, meeting for two hours once a week. We do a little bit of Quran memorization (we're aiming to finish Surat al Qadr by the end of the month isA), a little bit of Ramadan-related seerah, and a little bit of Arabic ABC's. We're splitting up the "teaching" between three of the moms, and I'm in charge of the ABC's part. Just in case they're of use to anyone, here are the games we used last week, when we covered ا, ب, ت and ث :

Jump-On-the-Letter Tag:

I wrote the letters ب, ت, and ث on separate pieces of paper, the same number of copies as we had kids.

Then I stuck them all randomly to the floor, spread out a bit so the kids wouldn't be too close together.

I made one copy of an ا for myself.

Then I called out letters, and the kids had to run to jump on the letter I had named.

But since I was the only person with an ا , when I called ا, the kids all had to run after me and try to tag me.

Musical Mugs:

I put a mug on the floor for each kid, arranged in a big circle.

The kids each had a set of flashcards with ا, ب, ت and ث on them.

I played the alphabet song in Arabic while the kids skipped around in a circle (well, more or less).

When the music stopped, I called out a letter, and the kids had to race to the nearest mug, find the right flashcard, put it in their mug, wave their mug in the air and call out the letter.

Pipe-cleaner ABCs:

I put the kids into pairs (just so that kids who weren't too sure of their letters would have a buddy to guide them), and gave each pair a bunch of pipe-cleaners.

I called out a letter and they had to work together to make it out of their pipe-cleaners.

All three games went pretty well, but the first one was probably the one they liked best.